Nato trains Afghan troops to make air strikes more accurate
LOGAR PROVINCE: Nato forces have begun a new programme to train Afghan soldiers to pinpoint ground targets for aircraft flying overhead, hoping that it will help stem militant advances in recent months and reverse a sharp rise in civilian casualties.
The alliance has shifted most military responsibility on to Afghanistan’s armed forces since it ended its main combat mission after 2014, including building up air capabilities that are crucial to holding back Taliban gains.
A growing number of mainly small Afghan aircraft have been firing increasingly powerful weapons at militants with little or no guidance from the ground, a problem that US advisers like Lieutenant Colonel Andy Janssen are trying to address.
“When you’re in the air, the picture of what’s going on is vastly different than when you’re on the ground,” he said during a recent training exercise in Logar province, just south of the capital Kabul. “The ability to take a pilot’s eyes to the target effectively is huge. The effectiveness of the strikes goes up exponentially when you do that.”
About 60 students are currently at various levels in the programme, with officials hoping to field nearly 100 socalled Afghan Tactical Air Controllers (ATACs) by March next year, in time for an expected seasonal upswing in Afghan Taliban fighting after mountain snows melt. While air “spotters” are no guarantee that the right target will be hit, greater accuracy from air strikes is crucial on two fronts. Afghan ground forces have struggled to contain a stubborn insurgency and their reliance on effective air support is increasing.
And civilian casualties from air strikes have spiked this year, with 133 Afghans killed and 159 wounded in the first nine months of 2016, 72 per cent up from the same year-ago period.
While no separate data were available for attacks carried out by Afghan, US or Nato aircraft, the UN said two-thirds of this year’s civilian casualties were caused by the local air force.
The UN also said Afghanistan had 41 aircraft capable of conducting air strikes by June, up from 28 at the end of last year. At a military range in Logar, students and pilots practise coordinating air strikes as warplanes and helicopters blast old cars set as targets on the ground.
The trainees used compasses, laser range finders, GPS devices and what Janssen called “very complicated” radios.
Afghan air force A-29 attack planes roared past as ATACs perched on a dusty hill consulted pages full of calculations and spoke by radio to the pilots overhead.
Nearby, US advisers monitored the conversation, double checking the process and interjecting with advice, corrections, or encouragement.
Once clearance was given, a plume of smoke appeared under the aircraft’s wing followed by a blast of dust as rockets hit the training range.
Unlike American soldiers, who may undergo years of specialised certifications to direct air strikes, Afghans in the programme will be deployed after five to six weeks of training, although instructors say they will receive more advanced training later. Like the Afghan air force more broadly, which only began to expand rapidly in the last two years, the ATAC programme has had a slow start.
In an initial programme, soldiers were pulled from existing army units for training as ATACs, said Colonel Troy Henderson, commander of the US Air Force’s expeditionary advisory group in Kabul.
When they returned, however, many went back to other army jobs, rather than working to coordinate air cover.
“They didn’t have positions set aside, so the newly trained ATACs were out guarding gates,” Henderson said. “We didn’t foresee that problem when we started off.”
Under the new programme, initiated in March, ATACs have been assigned directly to the air force, allowing them to focus on their specialised role, he added.